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Jerusalem, Belfast, Johannesburg andmany other cities condense the explosivetensions of the present-day world.In a context of migratory movementsand developmental inequalities that perpetuateethnic wars, urban planning policiescannot be dissociated from the outcomeof the drama being played out.Land use planning strategies, whethersegregative or integrative, have a significantrole in maintaining or underminingthese unstable equilibria.

Annick Osmont

« Governance » : a Weak Concept, a Strong Policy

At the end of the 1980s, the Anglo-Saxonconcept of « governance » was adoptedby the World Bank to enable public policiesin debt-ridden countries to adapt tomarket demands. For this purpose, « goodlocal governance » must not only be drivenby tight budgetary policies and economicderegulation, but must also displaytransparency in its decisions. Nevertheless,the contract between local publicauthorities and the population, which isone of democracy, does not conform toa model used primarily to make indebtedcountries fit criteria of global liberalism.

Sylvy Jaglin

Urban Management builds archipelago in Southern Africa

In the current democratization processin Southern Africa, urban managementpartners are endeavouring to achieve theright balance between regulation andliberalization. Encouraged by the WorldBank, privatization of community servicesis making up for the inadequaciesof the public monopoly. It is in SouthAfrica that the inhabitants’involvementin these transformations seems the mostadvanced, at the risk of running counterto the rules of representative democracy.Locally persisting ethnic and social antagonismsare making new national regulationsnecessary.

Thierry Paulais

The market in Black African cities

In what is commonly called the urbancrisis in Black Africa, markets, whetherspecific facilities or commercial areas,are having a severely disturbing effecton local policies. The polarization ofcities around these markets, in urbancentres or close to railway stations, givesrise to urban dysfunctions, the cost ofwhich weigh heavily on communes withscant financial and technical resources.The failure to relocate these marketsshows that in isolation, local authoritiesare unable to control the conditions ofcity-wide access and supply.

Rebecca Abers

Grassroots Participation in Porto Alegre in Brazil

For some twenty years, the municipalityof Porto Alegre has been closelyinvolving the inhabitants in decisions.The extravagant investments of previousyears have given way to small operationsdefined by a more socially balanceddistribution of resources. The newparticipatory structures, which goagainst the local client-orientedapproach, have made change a longtermobjective but still leave the mostdeprived people without any say in matters.

Anete Brito Leal Ivo

Experience with Urban Governance in Salvador de Bahia in Brazil

The democratic project of the municipalityof Bahia in Brazil, newly electedin 1992, is having to cope with a publicfunding crisis and worsening socialinequality. This municipality, which isgenerous but lacking in governmentalexperience, is meeting with oppositionfrom local leaders and the machinery ofgovernment. Despite differences of opinionfrom within its ranks, the new progressivecoalition has initiated someinnovative operations in the fields ofcultural promotion, education andhealth.

Diana Mosovitch Pont-Lezica

The Subsidiarity Policy in Godoy Cruz and Mar del Plata in Argentina

In two medium-sized towns in Argentina,Godoy Cruz and Mar del Plata, decentralizationof local management responsibilitiesin a neo-liberal context isbuilding on the significant features ofeach urban entity. The inhabitants fromthe middle and working classes are organizedin neighbourhood associations andare making themselves heard in the faceof the privatization of services. In GodoyCruz, in an industrial region, their pressurehas influenced social policies infavour of fairer redistribution. In Mardel Plata, in a farming and tourist region,local demands remain low key.

Rob Atkinson

The Vagaries of Inhabitants’Participation in Urban Governance in Europe

Urban governance is defined as a moreor less informal system coordinatingplayers of various origins, both publicand private, working in socially fragmentedand geographically variableareas. In a Europe in the grip of socialprecarity, this term has come to reflectthe links forged between the protagonistsof solidarity or urban social developmentpolicies. But the actual participationof the inhabitants concerned isstill the blind spot of this new trend.

Dominique Lorrain

Administrate, govern, regulate

The development of cooperation betweenthe local public sector and privatecompanies in a heteronomic urbancontext does not justify recourse to theconcept of governance, which originallyreferred to a set of more or lessinformal measures for simplifyingsocial relations in big American firmsin the inter-war period. Local governmentand administrative coordinationare still concepts capable of accountingfor current trends. In this context,trade mechanisms, hierarchies and thesharing of common orientations are allvariables relevant to the analysis oflocal interrelationships.

Dominique Joye, Vincent Kaufmann

Fifty years of Land Use Planning in Geneva

An examination of urban planning proceduresin Switzerland, a country witha long urbanistic tradition, highlightsthe increase in the scales of referenceand key players. In Geneva, the expansionof commuting zones, environmentalprotection systems and action plansagainst poverty are thus enlarging thedecision-making circle. Parliamentaryrepresentation confronted with democracyon a case-by-case referendumbasis is the body most affected by thisnew trend.

Jean-Philippe Leresche

Swiss Cities Braced against Poverty

In Switzerland, growing inequalities andthe exclusion process are taxing thesocial services, which are highly compartmentalizedbetween the confederation,the cantons and the communes.Despite this negative fragmentation, theurban agglomeration provides the mostappropriate framework for makingpublic and private actions complementaryto one another. The concept of localgovernance as a new horizon for socialpolicy coordination takes on meaningwith the crisis of local finances and questioningas to the finality of public action.

Michel Grossetti, Christophe Beslay, Denis Salles

The Neo-Republican Model and Industrial Reconversion Sites

Since decentralization, many skills networkshave been disorganizing the traditionalinterplay between communityleaders and the prefect. In cities undergoingindustrial reconversion, there arevarious forms of cooperation betweenlocal players and specific operators. Thegrowing power of expertise and internationalmarket linkages are leadingtowards a highly fragmented decisionsystem led by the Département (county)and ad hoc organizations - a system thatcan be described as neo-republican.

Dominique Chevalier

Urban Policy, the reserved sphere of the mayor ?

Decentralization, openness towardsEurope and the social fracture are conduciveto the mass-mediatized commitmentof mayors fully determined to make theirmark on their city. The presidentializationof the metropolis system is particularlystrengthened through urban planningdecisions. Any charismatic mayorworthy of the name must be able tomainstream the smallest kerbside repairinto a universal forward-looking visionthat does not neglect local history.

Taoufik Ben Mabrouk

The Metropolitan Ambition of Lyon

In spite of unanimistic language, big citiesare always living environments whereantagonistic pressure groups will clash.Intercommunal cooperation, which payslip service to rational planning, has onlygradually been phased into the Lyon urbanarea. The emergence of Michel Noir’sleadership in the 1980s merely revivedold quarrels between the elected representativesin the city centre and those inthe outer suburbs. Owing to these tensionsand to the project to form an urbanregion, the State departments maintaintheir presence in local affairs to somedegree.

Jean-Marc Offner

Saint-Denis/Bobigny Tramway embracing Uses and New Uses and New

The history of the tramway from Saint-Denis to Bobigny in the greater Paris areachallenges the assumption of negotiatedcooperation between the State and thelocal authorities on which the urbangovernance concept is based. The decisionand then the building of this tramway,which was uncontested, are consistentwith the regulation model between thecentre and the fringes of power based onthe symbolic tension between the Stateand the suburbia, and on the politicalconsensus around the technology involved.

Nathalie Hubler

Interplay of Actors on the Var Coast

Nature conservation policies on the Varcoast, despite being seemingly disorganizedand ineffectual, are patterned bytheir protagonists’strong self-replicatinglogics. The most common way of overcomingconflict in the use of an ecosystemthreatened by destruction, is for communityleaders to call on internationalexpertise and invoke local interests.When all is said and done, the symbolicalequivocation of the environmentalconcept ensures a degree of political stability.

Gilles Jeannot, Fabienne Margail

Strategic « Awareness-raising »

The « awareness-raising » procedureillustrates the State’s new positiontowards decentralization-based urbanplanning. In the urban agglomeration ofMarseille, the Public Works Departmentsprovide objective information on economicand social trends in the metropolitanarea and on risks of urban malfunctioning,in order to encourage the institutionalorganization of the urban areaand to make it a subject of public debate.

Taoufik Souami

Whether to Participate in Governance ?

Urban governance set up as a paradigmintroduces doubts as to the ultimate aimsof public action and the sincerity of itspartners. Utilitarianism based on a liberalapproach, which secretly inspiressuccessive social participation systemsis widening the gap between legitimateinstitutions and individuals or unorganizedminorities. Repeatedly makingargument for the partnership procedureis evidence of a lack of understanding ofthe relationships specific to populationsconsidered as excluded or fringe groups.

Gilles Novarina

Building Social Demand through the Urban Planning Project

The Anglo-Saxon concept of governanceattaches little importance to the socialantagonisms underlying urban planningdecisions. It is mainly concerned withsocio-technical processes for developingmajor urban projects but ignores day-todaymunicipal management or the difficultiesof expression of local disadvantagedinhabitants. But speaking of governanceor urban systems brings up furtherquestions on forms of local democracyand the conflictful building of thegeneral interest.

Alain Bourdin

Governance, Social Consciousness and Management of Urban Services

Geographic mobility, family instabilityand deteriorating employment are puttingsocial consciousness to the test. Thedisavowal of community values accentuatesthe division of the city into reservedareas. The impact of services ondaily life, from top to bottom of thesocial scale, places their managementat the centre of urban governance matters.Their quality can then become amajor policy issue.

Isaac Joseph, Anni Borzeix

A day without cars in La Rochelle or Democracy on a Case-by-Case Basis

On 9 September 1997 in la Rochelle,the city celebrated the commonweal bygiving the citizens back the pleasure ofbeing able to walk and meet together instreets devoid of cars. Throughout thissunny event, the city’s general publictuned its many movements into the openair, health, the heritage and conversation.The universal message of an eventsuch as this owes much to the long-standingpedagogic and republican spirit cultivatedby the municipality.

Carlos B. Vainer

Urban Planning based on Tolerance

Since ancient times, urban legend hascelebrated the miracle of the peacefulcoexistence of heterogeneous groups inthe same place. Modernity has broughtthis ability to integrate diversity rightinto the individual conscience of the citizen,a two-minded figure if there wasone. But the unanimistic and utilityfocusedstrategic planning doctrine nowbeing advocated by urban planners gainsaysthe antagonisms at play in the citypatchwork. Conversely, building the cityas a place where cultures which cannever entirely lose their specificity,revives the tradition of urban tolerance.